Where is the outrage?
That’s what Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling asked in the wake of an April 13 mass shooting on the city’s South Side.
That Saturday evening, 11 people were hit by a spray of bullets during a family gathering in the New City neighborhood. Four of the victims were young children. Ariana Molina, 9, who was shot in the head, died.
Ariana and her family were outside their home, celebrating a relative’s confirmation.
“I would really like to know where the outrage is for that,” Snelling told WLS-Ch. 7 last week in an interview. “I (would) really like to know where the outrage is for people in this city who had been victimized, who had been traumatized who are going to continue to go through that trauma.”
Police detectives are investigating, but the shooters have not been apprehended. Dozens of shots were fired at the family gathering by several shooters, using the machine gun-style weapons commonly carried by gang members, the station reported.
“And I just can’t imagine the parents who have lost a child or … a child has been shot and been in surgery,” Snelling said. “That trauma is not only going to affect the parents long term, but the children will be affected for the rest of their lives by these incidents. And then the senseless loss of life is just, it’s just unimaginable. I can’t even imagine what those parents are going through.”
Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling speaks during a news conference at headquarters on April 12, 2024. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
I share Snelling’s frustration. Snelling has spent a lengthy career battling Chicago crime. He is intimately familiar with the city’s pernicious gang warfare and its cruel results. For decades, the drive-bys and shootouts have transformed Chicago neighborhoods into treacherous war zones.
How, he wonders, can the public can turn a blind eye to it? We see a few headlines, TV reports that include interviews with devastated family members, then a fade to black until the next shooting, just around another dangerous corner.
There is no outrage over the endless flood of illegal guns into Chicago that has put it at the top of the list of numbers of mass shootings nationwide.
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In the last decade, Illinois and Chicago suffered more mass shootings than any other state and city in the nation, according to a recent Chicago Tribune analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive.
“In the last 11 years, Illinois accounted for close to 10% of all mass shootings in the nation, with almost 490 across the state, killing 356 people and wounding more than 2,080 others,” the Tribune reported.
In 2023, there were 34 mass shootings in Chicago, resulting in 27 deaths and 143 injuries, the data shows. The archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot in a single event, not including the gunman.
This year, Chicago has already seen six shootings in which three or more people were shot — seven were killed.
Yet, no outrage that thousands of innocent children and families are held hostage to the incessant gun violence on the South and West sides of Chicago. They cannot walk home from school, play hoops at the local park or even enjoy a family celebration in their own front yards without being shot.
People console one another at the scene where several people were shot near the 5200 block of South Damen Avenue on April 13, 2024, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
People attend a prayer vigil in the 2000 block of West 52nd Street in Chicago, April 15, 2024, after a mass shooting over the weekend that claimed the life of 9-year-old Ariana Molina. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
According to police, these shootings are targeted and often involve gang members seeking retribution. These criminals oversee the mayhem. They roll up on the street and start shooting, with no regard to the lives they take or the maimed and traumatized people the carnage leaves behind.
Why is there no outrage about the fact that the vast majority of the perpetrators are people of color in this majority-minority city?
There is no outrage that these criminals are Black and Latino, killing their own. There is no brotherhood there. Just death.
There is no outrage that the relationship between police officers and some communities is so shredded that few community members come forward with information, leaving these terrible killings unsolved.
Yes, a few have spoken out. Mayor Brandon Johnson issued a statement about the New City shooting. A few other prominent voices have weighed in. Neighborhood residents held anguished gatherings and media events to demand more government investment to combat violence in the area.
The rest of us? Mass shootings seem to have become acceptable. We have become inured and indifferent to the slaughter.
Without outrage, there is no hope.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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